John Murray - "Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent Publications July, 1890"

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Arnold Bennett - "Leonora"

Various - "Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II."

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The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) written by Edmund Burke

E >> Edmund Burke >> The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12)




XIII. That the said Hastings, further to persuade the Court of Directors
to involve themselves in the affairs of the Mogul, and to reconcile this
measure with his former conduct and declared opinions, did write to them
to the following effect: That "at that former period to which the
ancient policy with regard to the Mogul applied, the king's authority
was sufficiently respected" (which he knew not to be true,--having
himself declared, in his minute of the 25th of October, 1774, "that he
remained at Delhi, the ancient capital of the empire, _a mere cipher_ in
the administration of it") to maintain itself against common
vicissitudes; that he would not have advised interference, if the king
himself retained the exercise of it, _however feeble_, in his own hands;
that, if it [the Mogul's authority] is suffered to receive its final
extinction, it is impossible to foresee _what power may arise out of its
ruins_, or what events may be linked in the same chain of revolution
with it: but your interests _may_ suffer by it, your reputation
_certainly will_, as his right to our assistance _has been constantly
acknowledged_, and by a train of consequences to which our government
has not intentionally given birth, but most especially by the movements
which _its influence, by too near an approach_, has excited, it has
unfortunately become the efficient instrument of a great portion of the
king's present distresses and dangers,--intimating (as well as the
studied obscurity of his expressions will permit anything to be
discerned) that his own late intrigues had been among the causes of the
distresses and dangers, which by new intrigues he did pretend to remove:
and he did conclude this part of his letter with some loose general
expressions of his caution not to affect the Company's interests or
revenues by any measures he might at that time take.

XIV. That the principle, so far as the same hath been directly avowed,
of the said proceedings at the Mogul's court, was as altogether
irrational, and the pretended object as impracticable, as the means
taken in pursuit of it were fraudulent and dishonorable, namely, the
restoration of the Mogul in some degree to the dignity of his situation,
and to his free agency in the conduct of his affairs. For the said
Hastings, at the very time in which he did with the greatest apparent
earnestness urge the purpose which he pretended to have in view with
regard to the dignity and liberty of the Mogul emperor, did represent
him as a person wholly disqualified, and even indisposed, to take any
active part whatsoever in the conduct of his own affairs, and that any
attempt for that purpose would be utterly impracticable; and this he
hath stated to the Court of Directors as a matter of public notoriety,
in his said letter of the 16th of June, 1784, in the following
emphatical and decisive terms.

"_You need not be told_ the character of the king, whose inertness, and
the habit of long-suffering, has debased his dignity and the fortunes of
his house _beyond the power of retrieving either the one or the other_.
Whilst his personal repose is undisturbed, he will _prefer_ to live in
_the meanest state of indigence_, under the rule of men whose views are
bounded by avarice and the power which they derive from his authority,
rather than commit any share of it to his own sons, (though his
affection for them is boundless in every other respect,) from a natural
jealousy, founded on the experience of a very different combination of
those circumstances which once served as a temptation and example of
unlawful ambition in the princes of the royal line. His ministers, from
a policy more reasonable, have constantly employed every means of
influence to confirm this disposition, and to prevent his sons from
having any share in the distribution of affairs, so as to have
established a complete usurpation of the royal prerogative under its
own sanction and patronage."

XV. That the said Warren Hastings, having given this opinion of the
sovereign for whose freedom he pretended so anxious a concern, did
describe the minister with whom he had long acted in concurrence, and
from whom he had just received the extraordinary secret embassy
aforesaid for the purpose of effecting the deliverance of his master,
the Mogul, from the usurpations of _his ministers_, as follows. "The
first minister, Mudjed ul Dowlah, is _totally_ deficient in every
military quality, conceited of his own superior talents, and formed to
the practice of _that crooked policy which, generally defeats its own
purpose_, but sincerely attached to his master." The reality of the said
attachment was not improbable, but altogether useless, as the said
minister was the only one among the principal persons about the king who
(besides the total want of all military and civil ability) possessed no
territories, troops, or other means of serving and supporting him, but
was himself solely upheld by his influence over his master: neither doth
the said Hastings free him, any more than the persons more efficient,
who were to be destroyed, from a disposition to alienate the king from
an attention to his affairs, and from all confidence in his own family;
but, on the contrary, he brings him forward as the very first among the
instances he adduces to exemplify the practices of the ministers against
their sovereign and his children.

XVI. That the said Warren Hastings, recommending in general terms, and
yet condemning in detail, every part of his own pretended plan, as
impracticable in itself, and as undertaken in favor of persons all of
whom he describes as incapable, and the principal as indisposed to avail
himself thereof, must have had some other motives for this long,
intricate, dark, and laborious proceeding with the Mogul, which must be
sought in his actions, and the evident drift and tendency thereof, and
in declarations which were brought out by him to serve other purposes,
but which serve fully to explain his real intentions in this intrigue.

XVII. That the other members of the Council-General having abundantly
certified their averseness to his intrigues, and even having shown
apprehensions of his going personally to the Mogul and the Mahrattas for
the purpose of carrying on the same, the said Hastings was driven
headlong to acts which did much more openly indicate the true nature and
purpose of his machinations. For he at length recurred directly, and
with little disguise, to the Mahrattas, and did open an intrigue with
them, although he was obliged to confess, in his letter aforesaid of the
16th June, 1784, that the exception which he contended to be implied in
the orders of the Court of Directors forbidding the intermeddling in the
disputes of "the country powers," namely, "powers not permanent," did by
no means apply to the Mahrattas; and he informs the Court of Directors
that he did, on the very first advice he received of the flight of the
Mogul's son, write to Mr. James Anderson to apprise the Mahratta chief,
Sindia, of that event,--"for which as he was unprepared, he desired his
[the said Sindia's] advice for his conduct on the occasion of it." Which
method of calling for the advice of a foreign power to regulate his
political conduct, instead of being regulated therein by the advice of
the British Council and the standing orders of the Court of Directors,
was a procedure highly criminal; and the crime is aggravated by his not
communicating the said correspondence to the Council-General, as by his
duty he was bound to do; but it does abundantly prove his concert with
the Mahrattas in all that related to his negotiations in the Mogul
court, which were carried on agreeably to their advice, and in
subserviency to their views and purposes.

XVIII. That, in consequence of the cabal begun with the Mahrattas, the
said chief, Sindia, did send his "familiar and confidential ministers"
to him, the said Hastings, being at Lucknow, with whom the said Hastings
did hold several secret conferences, without any secretary or other
assistant: and the said Hastings hath not conveyed to the Court of
Directors any minutes thereof, but hath purposely involved even the
general effect and tendency of these conferences in such obscurity that
it is no otherwise possible to perceive the drift and tendency of the
same, but by the general scope of councils and acts relative to the
politics of the Mogul and of the Mahrattas together, and by the final
event of the whole, which is sufficiently visible. For

XIX. That the said Hastings had declared, in his said letter of the 16th
June, 1784, that the Mogul's right to our assistance had been constantly
acknowledged, that the Mogul had been oppressed by the lesser Mahomedan
princes in the character of his officers of state and military
commanders, and he did plainly intimate that the said Mogul ought to be
relieved from that servitude. And he did, in giving an account to the
Court of Directors of the conferences aforesaid, assure them that "his
inclinations [the inclinations of the Mahratta chief aforesaid] were not
very dissimilar from his own"; and that "neither in this nor in any
other instance would he suffer himself to be drawn into measures which
shall tend to weaken their connection, nor _in this even to oppose his_
[the said chiefs] _inclinations_": the said Hastings well knowing, as in
his letter to Colonel Muir of the ---- he has confessed, that the
inclinations of the said Sindia were to seize on the Mogul's
territories, and that he himself did secretly concur therein, though he
did not formally insert his concurrence in the treaty with the said
Mahratta chief. It is plain, therefore, that he did all along concur
with the Mahrattas in their designs against the said king and his
ministers, under the treacherous pretence of supporting the authority of
the former against the latter, and did contrive and effect the ruin of
them all. For, first, he did give evil and fraudulent counsel to the
heir-apparent of the Mogul "to make advances to the Mahrattas," when he
well knew, and had expressly concurred in, the designs of that state
against his father's, the Mogul's, dominions; and further to engage and
entrap the said prince, did assert that "our government" (meaning the
British government) "was in intimate and sworn connection with Mahdajee
Sindia," when no alliance, offensive or defensive, appears to exist
between the said Sindia and the East India Company, nor can exist,
otherwise than in virtue of some secret agreement between him, the said
Sindia, and Warren Hastings, entered into by the latter without the
knowledge of his colleagues and the government, and never communicated
to the Court of Directors. And, secondly, he did, in order to further
the designs of the Mahrattas, contrive and effect the ruin of the said
Mogul and his authority, by setting on foot, through the aforesaid Major
Browne, sundry perplexed and intricate negotiations, contrary to public
faith, and to the honor of the British nation; by which he did
exceedingly increase the confusion and disorders of the Mogul's court,
exposing the said Mogul to new indignities, insults, and distresses, and
almost all of the northern parts of India to great and ruinous
convulsions, until three out of four of the principal chieftains, some
of them possessing the territories lately belonging to Nudjif Khan, and
maintaining among them eighty thousand troops of horse and foot, and
some of which chiefs wore the ministers aforesaid, being cut off by
their mutual dissensions, and the fort of Delhi being at length
delivered to the Mahrattas, the said Sindia became the uncontrolled
ruler of the royal army, and the person of the Mogul, with the use of
all his pretensions and claims, fell into the hands of a nation already
too powerful, together with an extensive territory, which entirely
covers the Company's possessions and dependencies on one side, and
particularly those of the Nabob of Oude.

XX. That the circumstances of these countries did, in the opinion of the
said Warren Hastings himself, sufficiently indicate to him the necessity
of not aggrandizing any power whatsoever on their borders, he having in
the aforesaid letter of the 16th June given a deliberate opinion of the
situation of Oude in the words following: "That, whilst we are at peace
with the powers of Europe, it is only in this quarter that your
possessions under the government of Bengal are vulnerable." And he did
further in the said letter state, that, "if things had continued as they
had been to that time, with a divided government," (viz., the Company's
and the Vizier's, which government he had himself established, and under
which it ever must in a great degree remain, whilst the said country
continues in a state of dependence,) "the _slightest_ shock from a
foreign hand, or even an _accidental internal commotion_, might have
thrown the whole into confusion, and produced the most fatal
consequences." In this perilous situation he made the above-recited
sacrifices to the ambition of the Mahrattas, and did all along so
actively countenance and forward their proceedings, and with so full a
sense of their effect, that in his minute of the 24th December, 1784, he
has declared, "that in the countries which border on the dominions of
the Nabob Vizier, or on that quarter of our own, in effect _there is no
other power_." And he did further admit, that the presence of the
Mahratta chief aforesaid, so near the borders of the Nabob's dominions,
was no cause of suspicion; for "that it is the effect _of his own
solicitation_, and is _so far_ the effect of an act of that government."

XXI. That, in further pursuit of the same pernicious design, he, the
said Warren Hastings, did enter into an agreement to withdraw a very
great body of the British troops out of the Nabob's
dominions,--asserting, however truly, yet in direct contradiction to his
own declarations, that "this government" (meaning the British
government) "has not any right to force defence with its maintenance
upon him" (the Nabob); and he did thus not only avowedly aggrandize the
Mahratta state, and weaken the defence upon the frontier, but did as
avowedly detain their captain-general in force on that very frontier,
notwithstanding he was well apprised that they had designs against those
dependent territories of Oude, which they had with great difficulty been
persuaded, even in appearance, to include in the treaty of peace,--and
that they have never renounced their claims upon certain large and
valuable portions of them, and have shown evident signs of their
intentions, on the first opportunity, of asserting and enforcing them.
And, finally, the said Warren Hastings, in contradiction to sundry
declarations of his own concerning the necessity of curbing the power of
the Mahrattas, and to the principle of sundry measures undertaken by
himself professedly for that purpose, and to the sense of the House of
Commons, expressed in their resolution of 28th May, 1782, against any
measures that tended to unite the dangerous powers of the Mahratta
empire under one active command, has endeavored to persuade the Company,
that, "while Sindia lives, every accession of territory obtained by him
will be an advantage to this [the British] government"; which if it was
true as respecting the personal dispositions of Sindia, which there is
no reason to believe, yet it was highly criminal to establish a power in
the Mahrattas which must survive the man in confidence of whose personal
dispositions a power more than personal was given, and which may
hereafter fall into hands disposed to make a more hostile use of it.

XXII. That, in consequence of all the before-recited intrigues, the
Mogul emperor being in the hands of the Mahrattas, he, the said Mogul,
has been obliged to declare the head of the Mahratta state to be
vicegerent of the Mogul empire, an authority which supersedes that of
Vizier, and has thereby consolidated in the Mahratta state all the
powers acknowledged to be of legal authority in India; in consequence of
which, they have acquired, and have actually already attempted to use,
the said claims of general superiority against the Company itself,--the
Mahrattas claiming a right in themselves to a fourth part of the
revenues of all the provinces in the Company's possession, and claiming,
in right of the Mogul, the tribute due to him: by which actings and
doings the said Hastings has to the best of his power brought the
British provinces in India into a dependence on the Mahratta state: and
in order to add to the aforesaid enormous claims a proportioned force,
he did never cease, during his stay in India, to contrive the means for
its increase; for it is of public notoriety, that one great object of
the Mahratta policy is to unite under their dominion the nation or
religious sect of the Seiks, who, being a people abounding with
soldiers, and possessing large territories, would extend the Mahratta
power over the whole of the vast countries to the northwest of India.

XXIII. That the said Warren Hastings, further to augment the power of
the said Mahrattas, and to endanger the safety of the British
possessions, having established in force the said Mahrattas on the
frontier, as afore-recited, and finding the Council-General averse in
that situation to the withdrawing the British forces therefrom, and for
disbanding them to the extent required by the said Hastings, did, in a
minute of the 4th December, 1784, after stating a supposition, that,
contrary to his opinion, the said troops should not be reduced, propose
to employ them under the command of the Mogul's son, then under the
influence of the Mahrattas, in a war against the aforesaid people or
religious sect called Seiks, defending the same on the following
principles: "I feel the sense of an obligation, imposed on me by the
supposition I have made, to state a mode of rendering the detachment of
use in its prescribed station, and of affording the _appearance_ of a
cause for its retention."

XXIV. That the said Hastings did admit that there was no present danger
to the Company's possessions from that nation which could justify him in
such a war, as he had declared that the Mahrattas were _the only power_
that bordered on the Company's possessions and those of the Vizier; but
he did assign as a reason for going to war with them their military and
enthusiastic spirit,--the hardiness of their natural constitution,--the
dangers which might arise from them in some future time, if they should
ever happen to be united under one head, they existing at present in a
state little different from anarchy; and he did predict great danger
from them, and at no very remote period, "if this people be permitted to
grow into maturity without interruption." And though he doth pretend
that the solicitations of the heir-apparent of the Mogul, who, he says,
did repeatedly and earnestly solicit him to obtain the permission to use
the Company's troops for the purpose aforesaid, had weight with him, yet
he doth declare, as he expresses himself in the minute aforesaid, that
"a _stronger impulse_, arising from the hope of _blasting the growth_
of a generation whose strength _might_ become fatal to our own, strongly
pleaded in my mind for supporting his wishes."

XXV. That the said Warren Hastings, after forcibly recommending the plan
aforesaid, did state strong objections, that did, "in his judgment,
outweigh the advantages which might arise from a compliance with it."
Yet the said Hastings, being determined to pursue his scheme for
aggrandizing at any rate the Mahratta power, in whose adult growth and
the recent effects of it he could see no danger, did pursue the design
of war against a nation or sect of religion in its infancy, from whom he
had received no injury, and in whose present state of government he did
not apprehend any mischief whatsoever; and finding the Council fixed and
determined on not disbanding the frontier regiments, and thinking that
therein he had found an advantage, he did ground thereon the following
proposition.

"If the expense [of the frontier troops] is to be continued, it may be
surely better continued for some useful purpose than to keep up the
parade of a great military corps designed merely to lie inactive in its
quarters. On this ground, therefore, and on the supposition premised, I
revert to my original sentiments in favor of the prince's plan; but as
this will require some qualification in the execution of it, I will
state my recommendation of it in the terms of a proposition, viz., that,
if it shall be the resolution of the board to continue the detachment
now under the command of Colonel Sir John Cumming at Furruckabad, and if
the prince Mirza Jehander Shah shall apply, _with the authority of the
king, and the concurrence of Mahdajee Sindia_, for the assistance of an
English military force, to act in conjunction with him, to expel the
Seiks from the territories of which they have lately possessed
themselves in the neighborhood of Delhi, it may be granted, and such a
portion of the said detachment allotted to that service as shall be
hereafter judged adequate to it."

XXVI. That the said Warren Hastings did, in the said proposal, endeavor
to circumvent and overreach the Council-General, by converting an
apparent and literal compliance with their resolution into a real and
substantial opposition to and disappointment thereof. For his first
proposal was, to withdraw the Company's troops from the Vizier's country
on the pretence of relieving him from the burden of that establishment,
but in reality with a view of facilitating the Mahratta pretensions on
that province, which would then be deprived of the means of defence. And
when the Council rejected the said proposal on the express ground of
danger to the province by withdrawing from the Mahrattas the restraint
of our troops, the said Hastings, finding his first scheme in favor of
the Mahrattas against the provinces dependent on the Company defeated by
the refusal of the Council to concur in the said measure of withdrawing
the troops, did then endeavor to obtain the same purpose in a different
way; and instead of leaving the troops, according to the intention and
policy of the Council, as a check to the ambition and progress of the
Mahrattas, he proposed to employ them in the actual furtherance of those
schemes of aggrandizement of which his colleagues were jealous, and
which it was the object of their resolution to counteract.

XXVII. That, in the whole of the letters, negotiations, proposals, and
projects of the said Warren Hastings relative to the Mogul, he did
appear to pursue but one object, namely, the aggrandizement of the
lately hostile and always dangerous power of the Mahrattas, and did
pursue the same by means highly dishonorable to the British character
for honor, justice, candor, plain-dealing, moderation, and humanity.




XIX.--LIBEL ON THE COURT OF DIRECTORS.


I. That Warren Hastings, Esquire, was, during the whole of the year
1783, a servant of the East India Company, and was bound by the duties
of that relation not only to yield obedience to the orders of the Court
of Directors, but to give to the whole of their service an example of
submission, reverence, and respect to their authority; and that, if they
should in the course of their duty call in question any part of his
conduct, he was bound to conduct his defence with temper and decency;
and while his conduct was under their consideration, it was not
allowable to print and publish any of his letters to them without their
consent first had and obtained; and he was bound by the same principles
of duty, enforced by still more cogent reasons, to observe, in a paper
intended for publication, great modesty and moderation, and to treat the
said Court of Directors, his lawful masters, with respect.

II. That the said Warren Hastings did print and publish, or cause to be
printed and published, at Calcutta in Bengal, the narrative of his
transactions at Benares, in a letter written at that place, without
leave had of the Court of Directors, in order to preoccupy the judgment
of the servants in that settlement, and to gain from them a factious
countenance and support, previous to the judgment and opinion of the
Court of Directors, his lawful superiors.

III. That the Court of Directors, having come to certain resolutions of
fact relative to the engagements subsisting between them and the Rajah
of Benares, and the manner in which the same had been fulfilled on the
part of the Rajah, did, in the fifth resolution, which was partly a
resolution of opinion, declare as follows: "That it appears to this
Court that the conduct of the Governor-General towards the Rajah, whilst
he was at Benares, was improper; and that the imprisonment of his
person, thereby disgracing him in the eyes of his subjects and others,
was unwarrantable and highly impolitic, and may tend to weaken the
confidence which the native princes of India ought to have in the
justice and moderation of the Company's government."